The Germans use the letter W to represent the sound we make when a V is used in Lithuanian and English. Antanas, the Lithuanian equivalent of the English language Anthony, also is likely to be Anton in Germany. Changing his name to make it easier for the Germans is the most likely explanation for the Lithuanian refugee, Antanas Varapnickas, arriving in Australia as Anton Warapnickas.
The Arolsen Archives is yet to digitise any German records for Anton Warapnickas or Antanas Varapnickas. Likewise, the Australian Archives in yet to digitise Anton Warapnickas’ papers relating to his application to migrate to Australia and his selection interview. This means that we do not know when or how Antanas or Anton arrived in Germany.
However, a Lithuanian language newspaper published in Germany, Mūsų kelias (Our Path), carried advertisements from Antanas in May 1946. He then was looking for his brother Jonas and someone called Ona Šimonelytė. He also enquired after his married sister, Ona Kikilenė, her husband, Zenonas Kikilas, and their children, Gyliai and Gylytė. At this time he was based in the German coastal city of Lübeck.
We also know that he had married in Lithuania, to Judita Stonkutė. Their marriage took place on 18 September 1938, when Antanas was 24, in the Seda parish church. He had been born on 11 March 1914 in Grūstė village, Seda parish, Mažeikiai district, in Lithuania. From the marriage record, we know that his mother’s name was Petronėlė Varapnickaitė (the name of an unmarried woman) and his father’s name was not stated.
The marriage record also tells us that his occupation, in Lithuanian, was darbininkas. This is the equivalent of labourer in the English language.
His Bonegilla card also advises us he had arrived in Australia on 28 November 1947 on the First Transport. He then became one of the 26 men sent from the Bonegilla camp to help build the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme. He left the camp on 14 January 1948, so he had spent roughly 5 weeks there. For his sake, we hope that he was committed to attending the weekday English language classes.
He married for a second time in Melbourne in 1951, to Maria Pilelis. It looks like she too modified her first name, perhaps in Germany, to suit the local orthography, as it usually is spelled Marija in Lithuania and Latvia.
She had arrived with Stepas Pilelis, 11 months older than her, on the Amarapoora. This ship reached Fremantle in Western Australia on 22 July 1949. Sad to say, Stepas was dead just over a year later, at the age of only 49. An unsourced newspaper clipping on one of his files said that he was a tuberculosis patient who had hung himself from a tree, leaving a letter of explanation behind. (The National Library’s Trove service reveals that the relevant newspaper was the West Australian.)
Stepas’ tuberculosis would not have been detected until Australia despite the careful checking for possible tuberculosis among all potential immigrants, which continues to this day.
Stepas was Latvian. We know from a Tėviškės aidai obituary for Marija that her brother, Juozas Narušis, had a Lithuanian name. From this we deduce that Marija too was from a Lithuanian family and we know already that she was a widow before her second marriage to Anton or Antanas.
Together Anton and Maria advertised their intention to apply for Australian citizenship in the required 2 newspapers in August 1954. They received this citizenship on 25 November 1955, when living on Bardsley Street, Sunshine, a northwest Melbourne suburb.
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| Antanas Varapnickas was another friend of Rasa's grandfather, Adomas Ivanauskas: here, Adomas (standing, left) has his hand on Antanas' shoulder (standing, right); others in the photograph include Adomas' friend Beryl (front left) and, possibly, Marija Varapnickas (second from left) Source: Private collection |
The earliest available digitised electoral roll on the Ancestry Website, for 1963, shows Anton working as a labourer while Maria had found employment as a weaver. She may have been working for a factory in the Sunshine area manufacturing fabrics – or perhaps at home, weaving folk fabrics for members of the Lithuanian community. Their situation remained the same in electoral rolls for 1967 to 1972.
At some stage they sought the rural life, moving to Daylesford, a spa town 114 Km northwest of central Melbourne. Perhaps they thought that living here was more like living in Lithuania than Sunshine had been.
Their move to Daylesford occurred before one of two joint Commonwealth-State electoral 1977 rolls for Bendigo were compiled. The compilation date for the digitised one possibly is 22 April 1977. Anton still was working as a labourer, while “Mary”, now 67 years old, had moved to home duties. This means that her previous work as a weaver was likely to have been in a factory.
On the 1980 roll, Anton had modified his occupation to builder’s labourer and they were at a different Daylesford address, suggesting that they were renting rather than buying. From the Ancestry digitising we cannot tell the date on which the roll was compiled, but Anton had reached eligibility for the age pension on his 65th birthday, 11 March 1979. The roll makes it look like Anton preferred to continue working for builders to retirement.
It was in Daylesford that Marija died on 13 January 1993 at the age of 82. The Tėviškės aidai obituary records that she had been seriously ill for 26 years, a statement that suggests cancer as the cause of death. In Lithuanian, the obituary continued, “Deeply saddened are her husband, Antanas Varapnickas, sister Mercelė Matulionienė, sister Magdė Rimušaitienė in Berlin (and) brother Juozas Narušis, who endured 26 years of suffering in Siberia and lives in Lithuania”.
Anton or Antanas followed nearly 3 years later, on 19 September 1995. Both had spent their last days in the Daylesford Hospital. Antanas was 81 when he passed, a good age.
Although Anton Warapnickas never had changed his name back to its Lithuanian spelling, Tėviškės aidai used the Lithuanian version in its brief obituary.
This notes that he was buried with Marija in the Daylesford Cemetery. It adds, “We have no further information about the deceased.”
May this blog entry put on record that he was one of the 727 men thought young, fit, sturdy and alert enough to be chosen for inclusion in the first post-WWII party of refugees from Germany to Australia – a social experiment testing whether or not the Australian people were ready for migration from Europe so soon after the War’s end. The experiment was an immediate success and a resounding one too, in that it started the culturally diverse migration program Australia still has today.
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| The headstone on the Warapnickas grave in the Daylesford Cemetery |
SOURCES
Ancestry, ‘Australia, Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980 for Anton Warapnickas’ [1963] https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1207/images/33112_202632__151-00315?rc=&queryId=a21ba650-ff59-47ae-8859-f0a92b1cb248&usePUB=true&_phsrc=caR321&_phstart=successSource&pId=80213119, accessed 10 April 2026.
Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card Lookup, ‘Anton Warapnizkas’ (sic) https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203910028, accessed 9 April 2026.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1955) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ [Maria Warapnickas’ naturalization] Canberra, ACT, 26 April, p 1154 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232877677/25099499, accessed 10 April 2026.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1955) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ [Anton Warapnickas’ naturalization] Canberra, ACT, 10 May, p 1303 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232877677/25099499, accessed 10 April 2026.
Metrikai.lt [Search for a marriage certificate for Varapnickas, Location = Seda, County = Mažeikiai, Parish/village = Seda RKB] https://www.metrikai.lt/?F6=Sedos%20RKB&title=Varapnickas, accessed 10 April 2026.
Mūsų kelias (Our path) (1946) ‘Mes ieškome savųjų‘ (‘We are looking for relatives’, in Lithuanian) Dillingen, Germany, 23 May, p 7 https://spauda2.org/dp/dpspaudinys_musu_kelias/archive/1946-nr20-MUSU-KELIAS.pdf, accessed 9 April 2026.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A7109, "Dead" card index of Registered Aliens, 1948-1951; PILELIS, Stepas: Year of Birth - 1910: Place of Birth - LATVIA: Travelled per - AMARAPOORA: Certificate No – 95035, 1948-1951 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=205653436, accessed 10 April 2026.
National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Western Australian Branch; K1331, Alien registration documents, alphabetical series, 1948-1965; 1950/PILELIS S, PILELIS Stepas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per Amarapoora 22 July 1949, 1949-1949, recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=3102072, accessed 10 April 2026.
National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; WARAPNIZKAS (sic) ANTON, WARAPNIZKAS (sic), Anton : Year of Birth - 1913 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 826, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203910028, accessed 10 April 2026.
Sunshine Advocate (1954) ‘Public Notices’ Sunshine, Vic, 15 August, p 12 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/74772914?searchTerm=Warapnickas, accessed 9 April 2026.
Tėviškės aidai (1993) ‘A † A Marija Varapnickienė ‘ (‘RIP Marija Varapnickiene’, in Lithuanian) Melbourne, Vic, 2 February, p 7 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1993/1993-02-02-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 10 April 2026.
Tėviškės aidai (1995) ‘Iš mūsų parapijų, Melbournas‘ (‘From Our Parishes, Melbourne’, in Lithuanian), Melbourne, Vic, 3 October, p 7 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1995/1995-10-03-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 10 April 2026.
West Australian (1950) ‘Migrant Found Dead’ Perth, WA, 9 August, p 11 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47879465, accessed 10 April 2026.
Wikipedia, 'Daylesford, Victoria' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylesford,_Victoria, accessed 10 April 2026.
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